These days, American politics are a virtual buffet of the unpalatable, but they’ve seldom served up anything quite so distasteful as the phony controversy over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s negotiated release after five years of Afghan captivity.

Essentially, the criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of this affair breaks down into three parts: that Bergdahl was a poor soldier, who abandoned his post prior to his capture and that his comrades’ lives were needlessly put at risk searching for him; that releasing five senior Taliban figures held at Guantanamo in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom has created an unacceptable threat to U.S. security; and that the chief executive violated the 2014 Defense Authorization Act by not giving Congress 30 days’ notice of the Guantanamo detainees’ impending release.

None of these claims really holds up to sober scrutiny.

As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, wrote on his Facebook page last week, “In response to those of you interested in my personal judgments about the recovery of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity. This was likely the last, best opportunity to free him.”

In an interview, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal — the American commander in Afghanistan when Bergdahl was captured — told Yahoo news, “We don’t leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal.” McChrystal also said that after the soldier was taken a number of operations were mounted attempting to keep the Taliban from moving him across the border into Pakistan’s unpoliced tribal regions. “We made a great effort and put a lot of people at risk in doing that,” the general said, “but that’s what you should do. That’s what soldiers do for each other, so it wasn’t the wrong thing to do.”

In fact, the “Soldier’s Creed,” which every member of the Army must recite from memory when up for promotion, contains a pledge “never to leave a fallen comrade behind.” Similarly, if the unspoken moral pact between Americans and their voluntary citizen service men and women means anything it’s that we should never recklessly or needlessly endanger their lives nor abandon them in a theater of conflict. Paktia Province, where Bergdahl was captured, has long been a hotbed of Taliban activity and a close examination of the casualty reports in the period after he was taken does not show fatalities out of line with what the Army incurred during the normal required patrols in that dangerous area during that period. It’s also worth noting that subsequent Army investigation found that Bergdahl’s unit was “undisciplined” with poor morale and that he had history of wandering off on his own — and, then, returning — going back to basic training. It’s equally significant — given the political climate of the times — that the handful of soldiers who’ve alleged their lives and those of their comrades were put at risk searching for a deserter were made available to the press by Republican political operatives.

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Army officials from Dempsey down have urged Americans to withhold judgment until all the facts about Bergdahl’s conduct are in, but the presumption of innocence has been a dead letter in our popular discourse for a long time now. Still, the campaign of personal destruction waged against the soldier and, more despicably, against his family — particularly his father, who has all been made out a traitor by Fox News — has been notably vicious, even by today’s standards. (I can’t speak for any other parent, but if my son had been held for years on end by the Taliban, I’d make the Hajj naked, if I thought it would secure his release.) Maybe it would be a good idea to take a deep breath and ask ourselves what sort of conversation we’d be having if the White House had just walked away from Afghanistan later this year and left Bergdahl to his own devices? Imagine the howls of outrage and betrayal from the ideological right.

What of the allegation that the five Taliban leaders exchanged for Bergdahl constitute a uniquely dangerous threat to U.S. security? Again, stop and think: These guys are now middle-aged and have been held incommunicado in an island prison thousands of miles from their homeland for 13 years. Rather than being “the toughest of the tough,” as the administration’s critics allege, only one of them even was involved with the Taliban military. All are unsophisticated tribal functionaries and members of an organization that never has operated outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. How much of a threat can they actually be, once our troops leave Afghanistan?

Currently, America holds 149 prisoners at Guantanamo from 21 countries. More than half — 78 — have been approved for repatriation to their homelands. (Of the eight convicted by military tribunals in the prison camp, all but two already are free or awaiting release pending completion of their plea bargains.) Six, including Khaled Sheik Mohammad, mastermind of 9/11 and self-admitted murderer of Daniel Pearl, and the Saudi-born Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, architect of the suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole, still are awaiting trial after more than a decade. The five Taliban officials were among the 71 prisoners being held “indefinitely” as “enemy combatants” because there was no way to bring criminal charges against them. When the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan later this year, and declares hostilities there at an end, formal combat will cease and our ability to hold any Taliban member not affiliated with al Qaida as an “enemy combatant” under the laws of war will end. In other words, we were going to have to cut these characters loose anyway.

So what about the allegation that Obama acted illegally by not giving Congress a month’s notice of the impending deal? (Just imagine the leaks to the press, if he had, and recall that the administration had been told Bergdahl’s captors would kill him should word of the talks get out.) Last week, law professor Stephen Vladeck, a leading expert on the military and the Constitution, told the Wall Street Journal, “Prisoner exchanges are such a fundamental, long-standing part of the laws of war that are carried out by the commander-in-chief (that) I think that any president — this president, President Bush, President Rand Paul — would say that it’s within his power.”

President Obama served notice of that fact in the signing statement he attached to the Defense Appropriations Act, asserting that certain of its provisions infringed the Constitution’s separation of Powers: “The executive branch must have the flexibility, among other things,” he wrote, “to act swiftly in conduction negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.”

One of those who agrees is William H. Taft IV, who has served in the State and Defense departments in several Republican administrations. In his view, the provision on congressional notification “impinges on the president’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief and should be treated as advisory only.”

In the end, what we have here is not a controversy over a soldier’s conduct, nor about national security, nor about constitutional legality. What we have is a manufactured series of attacks that really are about our destructively bitter, mindlessly partisan politics as usual.

Tim Rutten is a columnist for the Los Angeles News Group. ruttencolumn@gmail.com.